Page 7 of Omega's Heart

“I’m not your mate,” Quin said gently. “Don’t worry, I borrowed money from Holland.” His face was solemn but his eyes laughed.

“Good looking and rich. You know how to pick ‘em.” Damn, he was getting tired already and he’d only been awake, what? Five minutes? These damn drugs. “Well, you can see what’s going on. They managed to save the finger after all, don’t know if they told you they were going to take all three at first. I’d show you the leg stump, but who needs to see that?”

“You kept the knee. That’s good.”

“Yeah.” Kaden didn’t mention that he’d already been warned he was looking at losing it eventually. At minimum, a full knee replacement at some point. Worst case scenario, he’d be back within a year to have the joint and what was left of his shin cut off.

But that was far off in what he hoped was a distant future; for now, he’d take what he had and run with it.

Quin cleared his throat. “I called Mom for you. She already knew. Command called Salma and told him.”

“She coming?”

His brother shook his head, paused, then shrugged. “Don’t know. Do you want her here?”

He didn’t know if he wanted her there or not. She’d try to baby him, and she was suspicious— almost paranoid, really—of humans. It might be easier if she stayed home until he was walking. But it would be nice to have his mother there too. He sighed. “No, maybe not. She wouldn’t be happy and it would just get on my nerves. They’d kick her out, I imagine.”

His brother nodded and pulled his phone out, read whatever was on the screen, then shoved it back in his pocket again. “Do you want Abel to come stay nearby? Or Holland or Bax?”

Kaden grinned, dodging the question. “I notice you didn’t offer Cas.” He didn’t need his brothers’ omega mates fussing over him, getting in the way of his recovery. Though, if Quin and Abel had mated them, they probably weren’t airheads. But a couple of Christmas video chats wasn’t near enough acquaintance to figure out if he’d be able to depend on them, or if they’d have to depend on him here.

“He’s busy with a court case. Or, well, covering all of Garrick’s work while Garrick looks after it. Young alpha tried to get her omega brother to Mercy Hills under the radar and got caught out after curfew. It’s a shitshow.”

Kaden gave a low whistle. “You’re really blowing things up back here, aren’t you?” He caught his phrasing a second after he said it, with the twitch of Quin’s eye. For an instant, he felt bad because he knew that Quin had to be blaming himself for encouraging Kaden to get out of the enclave and see a bit of the world. And then he thought, Fuck it. I’m the one who got blown up. I can make all the bomb jokes I want. “No, I’m fine, I think. There’s not a lot to do. The docs are gonna get me a hearing aid and once the leg is mostly healed, I start rehab to learn how to get around on it.” And maybe another surgery for the hand, but don’t think about that. They promised not to take that finger!

Quin nodded and leaned back in the chair. “I’ve got a couple of days off.” He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. “Brought a deck of cards. Wanna play Paws?”

“You know I’ll wipe the floor with you.” Kaden nodded at the wheeled table taking up space at the foot of his bed. “Pull that up here and prepare to belly up, Old One.”

“You forget I have pups now,” Quin told him as he dragged the table into position. “You’re doomed, pup.”

Kaden snorted and grinned. It was nice to have family.

C H A P T E R 6

I don’t know why I expected Mercy Hills to look different than home. After all, it was still an enclave, but when we came in sight of the tall concrete walls with their unnerving topping of silver, it just looked like any other part of the walls at home. Dull gray and shiny gray and ominous.

I guess I’d been expecting something a little more—free looking.

We stopped at the gate. I rubbed my hands on my jeans to dry my palms for probably the twentieth time in the past half hour. It didn’t seem to be helping.

“Out of the car, please,” said an older human.

I cast a look at my Dad, who’d come as chaperon to me for the trip. He nodded and made a ‘get moving’ gesture with his fingers, then undid his seatbelt.

“Pop the trunk,” the human told our driver, Phineas. “And you can get out too. Papers?”

Phineas was one of the top ranking alphas in the pack, just barely below the Alpha himself in terms of importance. So despite knowing that the humans had the power to deny us entry or even to send us to prison, it was still shocking to me to see him compliant with their demands. Without a word or even an aggressive glance, he handed a sheaf of paperwork out the window, then got out of the car. I was still sitting in the back, half paralyzed with nerves.

He opened my door and held out a hand to me. “It’s okay. I know this is all new for you, but it’s completely normal. Just like when we were leaving back home.”

Normal. I’d never been outside walls before in my life except for that one time I’d had to go with Aston to get his broken arm set, and my tolerance for ‘new’ had just about hit its limit. I ignored his hand and got out, slowly unfolding myself to my full height and, without thinking, stretching my arms up above my head to work the kinks out of my back.

“Felix,” Phineas hissed and pulled my arms down. “Wait until we get inside!”

I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about until I caught movement from the corner of my eye and realized that the younger of the two humans who had come out to greet us was slowly taking his hand away from his gun. I went beet red and hung my head. “Sorry,” I said softly to the human. “I’ve never been in a car that long. I was stiff.”

He didn’t look particularly mollified, but the old one looked down at our paperwork and pulled out the sheet with my name on it. “Ah,” was all he said, but whatever it was, his body language relaxed immediately. “I remember seeing the request for this. At least you were smart enough to ask and not try to sneak in,” he told me. Then he turned to the younger human. “It’s an omega.”